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by Jarwain 3282 days ago
Not entirely true, from what I understand. The statistic has been replicated in polls and surveys across various college campuses. The OP's representation, and yours, is a little clunky but makes rational sense to me.

His quote is "1 in 5 US women are estimated to be raped before the age of 25". This statistic is based on surveys conducted by the graduates of various colleges and universities. My understanding of the results are: of all the responding women, roughly 20% claim to have been raped. If the sample of women attending University and/or responding is representative of the population as a whole, then the original claim makes sense.

More to the point, refuting the single study, voluntary survey at one US university campus.

Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation Poll. "the poll surveyed a random national sample of 1,053 women and men ages 17 to 26 who were undergraduates at a four-year college — living on campus or nearby — or had been at some point since 2011. They attended more than 500 colleges and universities, public and private, large and small, elite and obscure, located in every state and the District of Columbia." [...] "5 percent of men and 20 percent of women said they had been sexually assaulted in college" http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2015/06/12/1-in-5-wom...

Campus Climate Survey Validation Study " Surveys were completed by more than 23,000 undergraduate students (approximately 15,000 females and 8,000 males). The average response rate across all nine schools was 54% for females and 40% for males" https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ccsvsftr.pdf

2 comments

The Campus Climate Survey Validation Study has on page 18 a summery of the result for undergraduate females during 2014-2015 in the 9 schools:

Estimated sexual assault: Averaged 10.3%, and ranged from 4.2% at School 2 to 20.0% at School 1.

Estimated sexual battery: Average 5.6% , and ranged from 1.7% at School 2 to 13.2% at School 1.

Estimated rape: Average 4.1%, and ranged from 2.2% at School 9 to 7.9% at School 5.

Across the nine participating schools, 4.3% of sexual battery incidents and 12.5% of rape incidents were reported by the victim to any official.

So according to it, the average rape on those 9 schools were 4.1%, but only 0.5% were reported. If we accept those numbers (54% response rate, common location and (likely) background, generational age), we have that out of 150 women that this article talk about, 6 women is estimated to have been raped, in contrast to the initial assertion of 30. The "1 in 5" study was a good signal that further studies was needed. The CCSVS can be seen as a good start of such further studies. The range difference of 400% between school 9 and 5 do say that we need to be careful and bigger studies/meta studies is needed to remove outlines and get averages and median value. In the mean time I suggest the nice and round number 5%, or if the assume that the above numbers are exclusive (uncertain if thats true), 20% that a undergraduate will be victim of some form of sexual misconduct.

Sexual assault != rape.

Case in point, I've had a random person grab my junk at a gay bar. Technically that's sexual assault, but it's a pretty far cry from rape.